Community Of Christ And The Reorganization

The Prophet-President leads Community of Christ, known until 2001 as the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, a denomination that traces its founding to the Latter Day Saint movement of Joseph Smith but rejected the leadership of Brigham Young after Smith's 1844 death. Rather than follow Young's westward migration to Utah, a substantial body of Latter Day Saints in the American Midwest reorganized in 1860 around Joseph Smith III, the founder's eldest surviving son, who had declined to join any of the rival successor movements as a young man and was invited to lead the reorganized body once he reached adulthood.

This choice set the Reorganization on a markedly different path from the Utah church: it rejected plural marriage, which the Utah church had publicly practiced for decades, and it developed a theology and worship style that grew closer to mainstream Protestantism over the twentieth century. The 2001 name change to Community of Christ reflected this trajectory, signaling a church that had moved away from some distinctive nineteenth-century Latter Day Saint doctrines while retaining the Book of Mormon as scripture alongside the Bible.

Headquartered in Independence, Missouri, a site significant in early Latter Day Saint history as a location Joseph Smith identified for a future temple, the church today emphasizes peace and justice ministries alongside its traditional sacraments.